Was Kaczynski's rant the last newsworthy document to originally appear in print only?

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It was 20 years ago Saturday that the world awoke to a strange treatise published in print by The Washington Post. The piece espoused extreme hatred for technology, what the manifesto's author described as the "industrial-technological system" that would someday end up "depriving people of dignity and autonomy."

Enlarge/ Artist's sketch of the Unabomber from the viewpoint of a witness who saw him plant a bomb in Utah.

The author turned out to be Theodore John Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He infamously sent the manuscript to the Post and The New York Times, saying if they published his rant against technology, he would stop killing and maiming people with letter bombs. After consulting with the FBI, the newspapers jointly published the manuscript, a move based largely on the belief that doing so could end the nearly two-decade long killing spree and perhaps lead to the author's capture.

The Unabomber's brother, David, read the published manuscript, realized it was his brother, and turned him in. Suddenly, the nation's longest and costliest manhunt for a domestic terrorist was over. The Unabomber is serving three life terms in connection to a nearly two-decade terror spree that injured 23 people and killed three others in the United States between 1978 and 1995. He was labeled the Unabomber because his main targets were university scholars and others associated with science and technology.

"In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we had to kill people," the manifesto said.

The Post on Friday recounted the internal machinations behind the decision to publish the 35,000-word manuscript. One particular paragraph in the story points out a larger theme, one essentially having nothing to do with the Unabomber but everything to do with technology:

Two decades later, the events surrounding the publication of the Unabomber’s manuscript seem both distant and eerily familiar. Some elements suggest a bygone age. The manifesto, for example, was perhaps one of the last newsworthy documents to appear only in print. Although the Internet was starting to seep into everyday life, few Americans relied on it for news. Within a few years, that would change irrevocably.

Fast forward to today, Kaczynski clearly wouldn't need the Post or Times to spread his philosophy. Thanks to technology that the Unabomber railed against, the Internet of today would have provided him a forum for his rants—just like it does now for stodgy news agencies, political protesters, tech sites, the mom and pops of the world, bloggers, and even the ISIS crazies.

Kaczynski used this L3 Smith-Corona portable typewriter for most of his documents, including his "Manifesto."

The Post's reflection on the Unabomber also sparked a reflection of sorts of my own dealings with the Unabomber. The anniversary prompted me to look for my own Unabomber files, the ones I maintained when I covered the Unabomber's court appeals for The Associated Press. As time passed, I think I must have thrown away most of the files, but I did find a three-page, photocopied letter the Unabomber addressed to me at my former press room office in the San Francisco federal building 15 years ago. Where that original letter is, I haven't a clue. There were also others that I cannot find.

Still, I did discover this Unabomber hand-written correspondence that has not yet been published on the Internet. I found it late Saturday in a file marked "Sadie," the folder I maintain with updated health information about my black Labrador dog.

As far as I can remember, this letter (PDF) was sent to me unsolicited from the Unabomber while he was in prison. At the time, he was demanding that he be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. He claims he was coerced by his attorneys to plead guilty—in exchange for a life sentence instead of a death sentence—to avoid a trial where his attorneys would focus on him being mentally ill.

J. Tony Serra, a prominent San Francisco lawyer who would later go to prison on tax evasion charges, told me 15 years ago that if Kaczynski won a new trial, he would put on a so-called "political defense."

"He always wanted to go to trial. He wanted to air his principles, his ideology behind his actions," Serra said. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was executed after his political defense flopped, one in which he said he blew up the building and killed 168 people as retribution for the FBI's Branch Davidian attack in Waco, Texas.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001 declined to allow Kaczynski to withdraw his guilty plea. If allowed a new trial, in which he said he would have accepted the death penalty if he lost, Kaczynski said in his letter to me that his defense would surround "dishonesty and incompetence of the FBI." The letter also said I mischaracterized his relationship with Michael Mello, the author of The United States of America versus Theodore John Kaczynski.

But on the anniversary of this unusual op-ed printing, I wonder how different this Unabomber episode might have turned out had Kaczynski been privy to today's Internet society and culture. Perhaps the answer to this question is worthy of a treatise in and of itself—print or online?

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David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets

Let's see 1995?- The World Trade Organization started.- so did Star Trek's Voyager series- OJ Simpson Trial begins- Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult- the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building - Christopher Reeve is paralyzed because of a fall- Sadam Hussein turns over more documentation of its weapons program but still denies weaponiozing biological weapons- President Clinton restores relations with Vietnam- Windows 95- DVD format announced- Bosnian conflict still on-going- OJ found not guilty- in November, a shutdown of the Federal government.- Toy Story released- Desert Storm officially ends- Calvin and Hobbes comic strip ends.

Nope, cannot say that I paid a lot of attention to what the Unabomber got published.

He also stoled Freud legacy and brought it to USA but it is another story

Also from the Wikipedia entry on Kaczynski:

Quote:

As a Harvard undergraduate, Kaczynski was among twenty-two students who were research subjects in ethically questionable experiments (possibly part of Project MKUltra) conducted by psychology professor Henry Murray from late 1959 to early 1962

I guess even murderous violent crazy people can be right occassionally.

Kaczynski was certainly murderous, if somewhat tepidly so by contemporary standards(sad, but true; his ability to evade the feds was above average; but all but the least competent spree shooters do more damage); but I don't think that there is much support for a verdict of 'crazy', except in the near-meaningless "Wow, I can't imagine just bombing all that stuff; crazy!".

His manifesto doesn't really break any new ground in primitivist thought; but it's much more cogent than things that people hand in as college coursework all the time; and certainly not timecube stuff. During his trial, neither the prosecution nor the defense made any serious mention of the possibility.

I don't know if the situation has changed since; reports are that ADX Florence does not do your psych status any good.

Kaczynski clearly wouldn't need the Post or Times to spread his philosophy. Thanks to technology that the Unabomber railed against, the Internet of today would have provided him a forum for his rants

From all we know about him today -- and taking into consideration he genuinely believed in his ideology -- I sincerely doubt he would be using the internet to spread his doctrines. The internet, if anything, would only just serve to fuel his anger and, unfortunately, to partially validate his claims.

He also stoled Freud legacy and brought it to USA but it is another story

Also from the Wikipedia entry on Kaczynski:

Quote:

As a Harvard undergraduate, Kaczynski was among twenty-two students who were research subjects in ethically questionable experiments (possibly part of Project MKUltra) conducted by psychology professor Henry Murray from late 1959 to early 1962

The US government and people generally paint mass-killers as insane. But here's someone who seems rational, yet also killed people.

Its a lot easier to imagine villains as one dimensional thus not have to actually explain why they did something which might be a call for self examination.

Also I've observed people do have a certain tendency to make empathy their grounds for leniency and wanting some exemption. Which while understandable even if consistently applied isn't nessecarily compatible with rule of law and gets authority types wondering about bad precedents and slippery slopes. Easier to starve the process from the get go.

(Also is arguably good for shaping the jury pool ahead of the trial, guilty by media coverage!)

Among other purposes, Murray's experiments focused on measuring people's reactions under extreme stress. The unwitting undergraduates were submitted to what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive" attacks. Assaults to their egos, cherished ideas and beliefs were the vehicle used to cause high levels of stress and distress. Among them was 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski

(emphasis mine)

This guy is mentally tortured as a CIA sponsored experiment. How did they possibly think this was going to end?

Murray himself goes on to win a gold medal lifetime achievement award. How many other lives did he destroy how many injuries and how many deaths(suicides) are on his hands. I'd wager probably more then the unabombers.

In this article. Joy quotes a passage from Ray Kurzweil's (then unpublished) book "The Age of Spiritual Machines." Joy writes:

Quote:

"Ray (Kurzweil) gave me a partial preprint of his then-forthcoming bookThe Age of Spiritual Machines, which outlined a utopia he foresaw - one in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology. On reading it, my sense of unease only intensified; I felt sure he had to be understating the dangers, understating the probability of a bad outcome along this path.

I found myself most troubled by a passage detailing a dystopian scenario...

The dystopian scenario which troubled Joy was a few paragraphs with the heading "The New Luddite Challenge."** Those paragraphs are at the link. The relevance here is in relation to this passage from the article today:

Quote:

J. Tony Serra, a prominent San Francisco lawyer who would later go to prison on tax evasion charges, told me 15 years ago that if Kaczynski won a new trial, he would put on a so-called "political defense."

"He always wanted to go to trial. He wanted to air his principles, his ideology behind his actions," Serra said.

I know that without quoting huge excerpts of that old article by Bill Joy for context nothing I am writing here makes a great deal of sense. But to quote enough for context is to make this comment itself article length, and comment sections aren't for writing articles. All I can say is...go read. It's long at eleven hyperlinked pages, but worth the time.

**

Spoiler: show

"The New Luddite Challenge" in Kurzweil's book was in fact an excerpt from Kaczynski's Unabomber Manifesto, but in Kurzweil's book the author of the passage is not revealed until you turn the page.

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

I guess even murderous violent crazy people can be right occassionally.

Kaczynski was certainly murderous, if somewhat tepidly so by contemporary standards(sad, but true; his ability to evade the feds was above average; but all but the least competent spree shooters do more damage); but I don't think that there is much support for a verdict of 'crazy', except in the near-meaningless "Wow, I can't imagine just bombing all that stuff; crazy!".

His manifesto doesn't really break any new ground in primitivist thought; but it's much more cogent than things that people hand in as college coursework all the time; and certainly not timecube stuff. During his trial, neither the prosecution nor the defense made any serious mention of the possibility.

I don't know if the situation has changed since; reports are that ADX Florence does not do your psych status any good.

yeah, he always struck me as more 'philosophically insane' than anything else. He wasn't some kind of nutter having a psychotic break out there fantasizing, he just has a completely 'out there' sort of philosophy that demands that he blow people up rather than just write reasonably cogent, if not exactly readable, rants about the ills of modern society. I'd classify him maybe as more 'extreme misanthrope' than crazy man. If you think about it, he probably had a pretty damned hard time, going to college at 16, being a prodigy, on a tenure track before he was 25, etc. AND having his head screwed with. Seems he just didn't like people all that much.

He is an extreme right-wing conservative, opposed to any advances in technology beyond those he was brought up with and which he thus thinks of as "natural".

Please, don't reduce this to the familiar bipartite system in US. He is an anarchist. There's as much an argument to call it extreme left-wing liberalism. He is neither left or right wing. He belongs to its own breed of political orientation that has nothing to do with the democratic principles that govern our political systems.

I guess even murderous violent crazy people can be right occassionally.

Kaczynski was certainly murderous, if somewhat tepidly so by contemporary standards(sad, but true; his ability to evade the feds was above average; but all but the least competent spree shooters do more damage); but I don't think that there is much support for a verdict of 'crazy', except in the near-meaningless "Wow, I can't imagine just bombing all that stuff; crazy!".

His manifesto doesn't really break any new ground in primitivist thought; but it's much more cogent than things that people hand in as college coursework all the time; and certainly not timecube stuff. During his trial, neither the prosecution nor the defense made any serious mention of the possibility.

I don't know if the situation has changed since; reports are that ADX Florence does not do your psych status any good.

yeah, he always struck me as more 'philosophically insane' than anything else. He wasn't some kind of nutter having a psychotic break out there fantasizing, he just has a completely 'out there' sort of philosophy that demands that he blow people up rather than just write reasonably cogent, if not exactly readable, rants about the ills of modern society. I'd classify him maybe as more 'extreme misanthrope' than crazy man. If you think about it, he probably had a pretty damned hard time, going to college at 16, being a prodigy, on a tenure track before he was 25, etc. AND having his head screwed with. Seems he just didn't like people all that much.

It seems quite probable to me that his rather clear views of a dystopian future may have pushed a somewhat marginal and stressed personality over one too many edges. There are days when I wish I could be more confident that his vision was less correct than I fear, although I doubt the dystopia will arrive as a direct consequence of our technology.

These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

What do you think the process of civilization IS? Humans are ALREADY a domesticated species, literally. We have many of the same physiological hallmarks of other domesticated species too, slightly decreased brain mass (relative to our closest ancestors), smaller and more crowded jaw, etc. Recent research suggests these changes may be related to neural crest cell line fate, and thus all mediated by a small set of changes which are associated with domesticity in animal species.

Obviously what Joy was talking about goes far beyond where we are now, and would represent a deliberate program, but in essence wouldn't it simply be a continuation and one might say perversion of an existing trend?

These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

What do you think the process of civilization IS? Humans are ALREADY a domesticated species, literally. We have many of the same physiological hallmarks of other domesticated species too, slightly decreased brain mass (relative to our closest ancestors), smaller and more crowded jaw, etc. Recent research suggests these changes may be related to neural crest cell line fate, and thus all mediated by a small set of changes which are associated with domesticity in animal species.

Boy, the amount of citations you would need to sustain this nonsense would probably crash Ars comment box.

He is an extreme right-wing conservative, opposed to any advances in technology beyond those he was brought up with and which he thus thinks of as "natural".

Please, don't reduce this to the familiar bipartite system in US. He is an anarchist. There's as much an argument to call it extreme left-wing liberalism. He is neither left or right wing. He belongs to its own breed of political orientation that has nothing to do with the democratic principles that govern our political systems.

the article wrote:Fast forward to today, Kaczynski clearly wouldn't need the Post or Times to spread his philosophy. Thanks to technology that the Unabomber railed against

I believe Kaczynski wasn't at all against the general technology. If we have digged a bit deeper on how he got himself ended up to his homeless condition up on a remote hill where he got himself arrested we might think otherwise.

From the news article I read years ago and not so sure the accuracy of the news I read. The article: He was a teching aide at UC Berkeley, California. Later he got himself busted for possession of marijuana.

He lost his job at the #1 university in California. Cops were still after him after he served his jail time. Track him down wherever he goes. He was unable to get another job and then being forced himself hiding out at a remote area where he was finally arrested.

The technology he was against at that time was the "surveillance technology". The police used them to close-in on him and drove him became homeless.

I guessed that he didn't want to put a blame on the surveillance technology, or even put a blame or mentioning on the police harassment, it might expose himself? Or, maybe at that time back 20 years ago he couldn't tell the differences between the general technology and the surveillance technology that the police used to harassed him.

We know now we have NSA, FBI, the state department and the local police's terrorist joined task force with the FBI were all using this high tech that were the left-overs from the military to keep all of us under monitored.

Back those days? No. People wouldn't believing you if you have mentioned there are devices for auto tracking, GPS, "on common criminals". etc..

It used to be that when you said something about police is tracking your cars. "What? The police is track your car? Who are you? A big time drug dealer? I don't believe you.".

Now that GPS is a common device for tracking. And, it gets to a size of a dime (a small in size a ten cents U.S. coin).

These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

What do you think the process of civilization IS? Humans are ALREADY a domesticated species, literally. We have many of the same physiological hallmarks of other domesticated species too, slightly decreased brain mass (relative to our closest ancestors), smaller and more crowded jaw, etc. Recent research suggests these changes may be related to neural crest cell line fate, and thus all mediated by a small set of changes which are associated with domesticity in animal species.

Obviously what Joy was talking about goes far beyond where we are now, and would represent a deliberate program, but in essence wouldn't it simply be a continuation and one might say perversion of an existing trend?

I find "Is humanity a domesticated species?" a wonderfully open-ended question, not least because I suspect most people's first reaction is that it is either obviously false or obviously true. Lots of room to explore the premises of the question, too. I'd read thoughtful essays.

I guess even murderous violent crazy people can be right occassionally.

Kaczynski was certainly murderous, if somewhat tepidly so by contemporary standards(sad, but true; his ability to evade the feds was above average; but all but the least competent spree shooters do more damage); but I don't think that there is much support for a verdict of 'crazy', except in the near-meaningless "Wow, I can't imagine just bombing all that stuff; crazy!".

His manifesto doesn't really break any new ground in primitivist thought; but it's much more cogent than things that people hand in as college coursework all the time; and certainly not timecube stuff. During his trial, neither the prosecution nor the defense made any serious mention of the possibility.

I don't know if the situation has changed since; reports are that ADX Florence does not do your psych status any good.

yeah, he always struck me as more 'philosophically insane' than anything else. He wasn't some kind of nutter having a psychotic break out there fantasizing, he just has a completely 'out there' sort of philosophy that demands that he blow people up rather than just write reasonably cogent, if not exactly readable, rants about the ills of modern society. I'd classify him maybe as more 'extreme misanthrope' than crazy man. If you think about it, he probably had a pretty damned hard time, going to college at 16, being a prodigy, on a tenure track before he was 25, etc. AND having his head screwed with. Seems he just didn't like people all that much.

I don't know what a good term would be; but there really should be one, for people who are not so much 'crazy' in the usual sense; but deeply unusual in the degree to which their not-especially-crazy-or-even-unusual beliefs motivate them to action.

The world is absolutely loaded with people who have beliefs that theoretically demand action(not necessarily violent action; this includes people who've been meaning to go to the gym more often; but haven't actually done so since they signed up back in january; as well as people who think that the racial holy war is nigh); but a lot of 'things I really should do' just get shoved onto the back burner and never happen.

What is really, really, weird about Kaczynski is not so much his position that technological society is fundamentally incompatible with human autonomy and ultimately not a good thing(that's pretty much Facebook's business model; and why we have the Law and Disorder section); it's just that most people are going to write a forum post, or maybe attend an net neutrality event in person; if they are a serious activist like that.

Strong motivation isn't necessarily a bad thing; it can as easily apply to people who are strongly moved in any direction; but it is a really, really, weird thing; especially when it is something that you maintain with zero encouragement, or active discouragement, from others. Saintly do-gooders are also fairly unusual, and they at least get pats on the back. Solitary, covert, homicide is a really thankless sort of task, and not something you'd expect a normal person to stick to, even if they believe things that suggest that a certain number of kills would be a good thing.

He is an extreme right-wing conservative, opposed to any advances in technology beyond those he was brought up with and which he thus thinks of as "natural".

Uh, no. He is the textbook definition of an Anarchist. You however are clearly the typical mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Follower of whatever political agenda you've been brainwashed into chanting propaganda for. You are a cancer on the colon of a free and thinking society.

Why does he think we have much autonomy now? We're heavily ruled by our desires, our hormones. We're ruled by our need to get food and find shelter from the elements. Modern society gave us freedom from working for food to working for money, working to get out of debt (wage slaves), working to afford not to work. American society in particular places far more emphasis on the importance of work, while other societies place a lesser importance on that in favor of personal or family time.

Then, if we did create superior, potentially autonomous artificial beings, why is that inherently bad? Maybe that's the best thing we can do as a species, create a race that's massively superior to ours, that isn't compelled by competitive urges to fight, isn't compelled to destroy for pleasure or personal gain. It's unlikely we could create such a race, but why wouldn't that be better than trying to send ourselves out to fill countless worlds with squabbling beings inherently made of many physical and mental flaws?

I don't want to get rid of the human race, because I'm selfish. But if we can't improve ourselves as a species, why is making an upgrade a bad idea? If you need to achieve something personally, there are lots of ways to make little differences in the world without relearning what has gone before.